Capitalism; Imperialism; Saving and investment; Socialism
The second theorist of populist criticism, Nikolayon, brings quite a
different economic training and knowledge to his work. One of the
best-informed experts on Russian economic relations, he had already in
1880 attracted attention by his treatise on the capitalisation of
agricultural incomes, which was published in the review _Slovo_.
Thirteen years later, spurred on by the great Russian famine of 1891, he
pursued his inquiries further in a book entitled _Outlines of Our Social
Economy Since the Reform_. Here he gives a detailed exposition, fully
documented by facts and figures, of how capitalism developed in Russia,
and on this evidence proceeds to show that this development is the
source of all evil, and so of the famine, also, so far as the Russian
people are concerned. His views about the destiny of capitalism in
Russia are grounded in a definite theory about the conditions of the
development of capitalist production in general, and it is this with
which we must now deal.
Since the market is of decisive importance for the capitalist mode of
economy, every capitalist nation tries to make sure of as large a market
as possible. In the first place, of course, it relies on its home
market. But at a certain level of development, the home market is no
longer sufficient for a capitalist nation, and this for the following
reasons: all that social labour newly produces in one year can be
divided into two parts--the share received by the workers in the form of
wages, and that which is appropriated by the capitalists. Of the first
part, only so many means of subsistence as correspond, in value, to the
sum total of the wages paid within the country can be withdrawn from
circulation. Yet capitalist economy decidedly tends to depress this part
more and more. Its methods are a longer working day, stepping up the
intensity of labour, and increasing output by technical improvements
which enable the substitution of female and juvenile for male labour and
in some cases displace adult labour altogether. Even if the wages of
the workers still employed are rising, such increase can never equal the
savings of the capitalists resulting from these changes. The result of
all this is that the working class must play an ever smaller part as
buyers on the home market. At the same time, there is a further change:
capitalist production gradually takes over even the trades which
provided additional employment to an agricultural people; thus it
deprives the peasants of their resources by degrees, so that the rural
population can afford to buy fewer and fewer industrial products. This
is a further reason for the continual contraction of the home market. As
for the capitalist class, we see that this latter is also unable to
realise the entire newly created product, though for the opposite
reason. However large the requirements of this class, the capitalists
will not be able to consume the entire surplus product in person. First,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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